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Following the recent notifications refresh, we’re super excited to announce that you can now get comment Push Notifications on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Stay connected to your blog and moderate incoming comments wherever you happen to be at the time.

Push Notifications
WordPress.com contributes to many Open Source WordPress apps, and we recently enabled notifications for the WordPress for iOS app. As soon as you get a new comment on posts you’ve published, a notification is sent to your phone. You will see the name of the commenter as well as a short excerpt of the comment, as much as we can fit. Swipe over the notification to view the comment.

We’ve also added a new “Swipe-to-moderate” feature in the comments list. This enables you to quickly Approve/Unapprove, Trash, Spam, and reply to new comments – it’s all just a swipe away. Of course you can still tap Edit to bulk moderate comments and tap the comment to view it in all its glory. In the detailed view you’ll see the post they commented on, their Name, Email, and URL, as well as an array of buttons for simple moderation.

Read Blogs on the Go
Did you also know that you can read your friends’ blogs with the app? When you open WordPress for iOS, tap “Read” to launch the mobile version of the Reader. You can read up on blogs you follow, see posts you’ve Liked, browse Freshly Pressed, and peruse popular Topics to find new sources of inspiration. When you find something interesting, you can Like or Reblog it to your own blog. You can even comment on posts you find right on your phone. And here’s the best part: it’s all synced back to your regular Reader.

Of course it’s also a great way to share quick photos when you’re out and about, write a post or two, update your About page, and check your daily Stats. It’s like having a mini-version of your blog in your pocket.

Get the Update
Already have WordPress for iOS installed on your phone? All you need to do to get Push Notifications is to update to the latest version and allow the app to send you notifications when asked.

New to WordPress for iOS? No problem, you can learn more about the app on its website, or click here to download WordPress for iOS directly! WordPress for iOS is available in most common languages and works on all newer iOS devices.

What’s Next?
This is the first time we’ve enabled Push Notifications in the iOS app, and we’ll continue to add more notification options so you’ll be able to have a full WordPress.com experience from your device. We’ll also make sure you get the notifications you want, when you want them. You’ll be able to toggle what Push Notifications you want to receive and which ones you’d rather not get notified about.

Learn more about the app and what’s next on the WordPress for iOS Blog, and make sure to follow @WordPressiOS on Twitter to get the latest news first.

So, hurry up and update your WordPress for iOS app to the latest version, and start using those notifi

Stuff happens all the time on WordPress.com. You’re blogging, commenting, liking, and following like never before. Every hour a record is broken and someone’s day is made. We’ve always known about your love affair with stats. We like watching numbers grow, too. And we also like to see the events that the numbers represent. We think of Notifications as a magnifier for Stats: you can zoom in to see exactly who did what and then connect with them.

The original Notifications menu first appeared in the WordPress.com toolbar as a small orange button and a stream of activities related to your blogs and comments. It was a good start but we’ve had bigger plans all along. Today we deployed a new toolbar button and, more significantly, a new tab on the WordPress.com home page.

The New Button

The first thing you’ll notice is that there is no number. We axed it out of compassion. It all boils down to how people feel about inboxes. In giving you a notifications stream, the last thing we wanted to do was cause more stress! So we dropped the unread count and now the orange color simply means there are new notes since you last looked. An icon shows the type of your latest notification.  The icon now also refreshes while you’re on a page, no need to reload a page to see new notifications.

You might also notice that unread notes are still white until you open them, which turns them gray. We didn’t entirely remove the concept of read/unread; we just stopped counting them. Feel free to turn them all gray if that’s your thing, or let some notes stay unread. Either way, we won’t pester you with a number.

The New Panel

In case you like to browse back through older notifications, we built a page that lets you do that. Just go to the WordPress.com Notifications panel and scroll to your heart’s content. Are you proud of a certain achievement from last month? Relive old glories as often as you like.

Other than letting you scroll to older notes, the new panel isn’t much different than the one in the toolbar. That will change soon! We have a list of features to add, as well as new notifications to send, that will make the new panel one of your favorite places on WordPress.com.

Today we’re sending one thousand notes every minute (ten million per week) but we want to send more. We have lots of ideas for new notifications. What kind of things would you like to be notified about?

Small Print

These changes are not compatible with Internet Explorer versions earlier than 9. We will devote some time to maintaining backwards compatability as long as it doesn’t delay the development of new features for modern browsers, but we encourage you to upgrade. Meanwhile, the old version of the toolbar will be displayed for older IE browsers.

11 Comments on Notifications, Refreshed, last added: 5/25/2012